


i felt he found my letters (and read each one out loud)

by halfmoonsevenstars



Category: Captain America (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfmoonsevenstars/pseuds/halfmoonsevenstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Incident Report:</p><p>12 March 1973 re: Codename: Winter Soldier</p><p>I regret to report that after more than fifteen years of selective use around the world, all to great success, last month’s Winter Soldier mission did not go as planned. The target, Senator Harry Baxtor, was eliminated, and the death was made to appear accidental. But after that, something went wrong.</p><p>(Captain America #13: The Winter Soldier, Part 5.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i felt he found my letters (and read each one out loud)

**Author's Note:**

> This never would have been written without the help of schlicky, who is amazing for both cheerleading and for catching some major sticky bits that would've made me look very silly if I hadn't fixed them.

_Incident Report:_

_12 March 1973 re: Codename: Winter Soldier_

_I regret to report that after more than fifteen years of selective use around the world, all to great success, last month’s Winter Soldier mission did not go as planned. The target, Senator Harry Baxtor, was eliminated, and the death was made to appear accidental. But after that, something went wrong._

_Codename: Winter Soldier failed to appear at his extraction point. His handlers waited, and listened to police transmissions, but he did not arrive, and the local authorities reported nothing that implied he’d been apprehended. Following protocol, our agents in the U.S. began a wide search for Winter Soldier. All extremes were taken to recover this valuable asset, including several sleeper agents breaking cover. Through that considerable effort, we were able to track some of his movements. Security camera footage showed him in civilian garb at the Dallas train station, boarding a train to Chicago._

_Interrogation of several passengers on board the train left the impression that Winter Soldier was confused while onboard. He was apparently confused about what year it was, and appeared uneasy around the other passengers. In Chicago, he was seen boarding a bus for New York City. His movements in New York are unknown to us, but for two weeks he was completely off the grid. It was only through sheer luck that he was found by one of our agents, sleeping in a flophouse on the Lower East Side. It took several agents, in the garb of New York City policemen, to take him into custody._

_Yet even after subsequent mental conditioning, Codename Winter Soldier has no answers for his conduct, or any memory of his time out of control. While troubling, the incident appears to be an aberration, requiring nothing more than closer watch. It is further recommended that in the future he be excluded from missions on American soil._

(Captain America #13: _The Winter Soldier, Part 5._ )

____________________________________________________________________________

When he awakes, he’s sitting upright. That’s not unusual, necessarily, not unto itself—but he’s moving _,_ which _is_ unusual. It takes a few moments to do a proper scan of his surroundings, where he finally realizes that he’s on some kind of a passenger train, and it makes him frown. He shouldn’t need this long to figure out where he is; he’s a sniper, an assassin, one of the _best_. He should _always_ be alert and aware of his environment, and if he isn’t, then he might as well paint a target onto his forehead.

The bright sunlight filtering in through the dirty window has rendered his brown leather jacket much too warm, but he doesn’t remove it. He wants to, but he knows that he _shouldn’t_ remove it; all he’s wearing underneath is a black t-shirt, and that’s not enough to conceal his left arm.

He’s proud of this arm. It’s _beautiful_ , constructed from shiny burnished steel with a red star so that he can always carry a piece of home with him.  He doesn’t remember how his flesh-and-blood arm—he doesn’t think of that as his “real” arm, because the real one is fixed to his left shoulder, as far as he’s concerned—was lost in the first place, but he knows there must be a good reason for it. Maybe they’d given it to him because they knew that he would be the best—and how could he not be, with such an incredible piece of technology?

_Didn’t ‘they’ do this to you in the first place?_

Unfortunately, however much pride it might give him to wear that star on his shoulder, letting these civilians see it would raise questions, draw attention that he most definitely does not want, though he isn’t quite sure _why_ , only that he knows he doesn’t want anyone finding out that he’s here – not just yet.

There’s an American passport in his front pocket, and a wallet inside his jacket containing a driver’s license from Indiana matches it, but the name on them isn’t his.

He doesn’t have a name.

No, that’s not right, he thinks. He _must_ have a name. Even though the last time he remembers waking up, it was in a laboratory of some kind, he surely must not have been _born_ there. Not even the best scientists in the Motherland can grow people.

Can they?

Maybe.

After all, it is—

It is—

What year _is_ it?

 “Can I see your paper?” The words come out sounding rusty, as if he hasn’t used his voice in years.

 _You haven’t. Don’t you remember? You were asleep._ They _put you there._

The man sitting across from him peers out from over the top of it, then narrows his beady eyes and glares. Well, then. He’d used the right language, at least. He hadn’t actually been sure that he would, but the man had seemingly understood him.

He could kill this man before the idiot even processed the notion of it, strangle him with this marvelous left hand of his, leave him nothing but a limp corpse cooling on these dirty vinyl seats, not to be found until the next stop when the conductor comes round to collect tickets. But he doesn’t. He smiles, hoping it looks natural and not like a starving bear who hasn’t caught a single salmon in weeks, and swallows a few times to moisten his throat.

“Gosh, sorry about that, sir. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just haven’t been feeling too well lately,” he says, and wonders how the fuck he can sound so _earnest_ , like a teenager, where that tone even came from. “I was wondering if I could see your paper when you’re done with it?”

The man smiles back, looking somewhat mollified by that. “Sure, son. It shouldn’t be too long. I just want to finish the sports section, and then it’s all yours.”

_I’m not your son._

He widens his smile. “Thanks so much.”

But that unsettled feeling doesn’t subside, even with the knowledge that he’ll have his questions answered once the man’s handed over his paper. He shifts in his seat, a futile exercise in trying to get comfortable as he wonders again how he wound up here. He doesn’t remember boarding the train. Doesn’t remember buying a ticket. There’s somewhere he was _supposed_ to be, he knows, but he just can’t recall where it is, or why.

_Not good, pal. Not good. Sure you ain’t losing it?_

He shifts again, but it makes no difference. The voice inside his head sounds vaguely familiar—and disturbingly young.

Go away, he thinks at the voice.

_I can’t._

Yes, you can. I’m telling you to, he says to himself, feeling ridiculous.

 _No, I don’t think you understand me. I_ can’t. _I’ve always been here— I’m part of you. You just keep forgetting it._

He frowns.  It’s probably a bad sign, arguing with himself like this, especially after realizing he doesn’t recall anything before waking up here. At least it isn’t out loud, or he’d probably get thrown off the train and then he’ll never get a good look at the newspaper masthead to find out where – and when – he is. For now, perhaps it’s best to just go back to ignoring that voice. It’s nothing but a pest, and if it were a fly, he’d pluck off its wings and grind them into the floor with the heel of his shoe.

That plan works for all of five minutes, and then it’s back again; he grits his teeth because it just won’t go _away_ , and he isn’t used to people who won’t do as he tells them.

_Do you even know where we are?_

There’s no “we.”

_Says you._

Shut up.

“Excuse me?” The woman across the aisle, who had been chatting amiably with another passenger, gives him a sharp look.

Fuck.

“Ma’am?” She looks to be substantially more intelligent than the man with the paper, so he doesn’t try wide eyes on her; that would be too disingenuous.

“Did you just tell me to shut up?” she asks, her face taking on a slightly pinched expression.

For once, he has no idea what to say. No easy lie springs to his lips, and he stuffs his gloved hands in his pockets, staring down at the floor, wondering—not for the first time—what the fuck is wrong with him. He shouldn’t be coming up empty like this.

“Young man, I’m speaking to you.”

_I think you’d better let me handle this one, ace._

And then, he hears that voice not just in his head, but coming out of his _mouth_. “No, ma’am. I’m real sorry about that. I know this is gonna sound strange, but I was just remembering an argument I had with my girl at the train station, and I guess it got away from me. I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud. You know how it is, thinking back on all the things you ought to’ve said. ”

She looks doubtful, but she nods and accepts the apology. It’s a good thing that the man, who must be the slowest reader in the entire goddamn universe, has _finally_ finished the fucking sports section, and hands the whole sheaf over, because he can murmur a thank-you and retreat into the paper, pretending to be very interested in the upcoming ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new double skyscrapers that have just opened in New York, now the tallest in the world. He has to swallow his immediate and total irritation at the way the skyline has been ruined by not just one, but _two_ symbols of American greed and capitalism, ugly and graceless and as ostentatious as Americans themselves, forcing himself to remember the real reason he needed the damn newspaper in the first place.

The _Morning News_ tells him that it’s February 16, 1973, and that he should expect sunny skies and temperatures in the mid 40s.

Hm, so he’d left from Dallas. Or, at least he’d been there at some point in the recent past. There’s a knot in his stomach that appears seemingly from out of nowhere, but he suspects it might have something to do with the fact that he really, _really_ doesn’t remember being in Dallas. But he’s not worried—merely concerned.

_Sure you aren’t._

It’s all he can do to force himself to stay in his seat and flip through the paper at regular intervals long enough to be convincing. And for all the trouble it’d been to get it, he really should be reading it— _actually_ reading it. But he can’t, not now; it’s too hard to concentrate. Maybe a walk would help, he decides. If nothing else, stretching his legs certainly won’t hurt anything.

Probably.

There’s a café car three cars down, and he’s absurdly relieved to find that there’s a map of the United States behind the small bar that shows the train’s itinerary highlighted in bright orange: California to Chicago by way of Texas. It’s too stylized to be accurate, more like a piece of cheap artwork that a tourist would buy if he didn’t know any better, but it’s at least something.

“Excuse me, but can you tell me where we are?” he asks the bartender.

“Just passed Little Rock,” the man says, not even looking up from the glass he’s washing.

Dallas to Little Rock, he thinks, and the train stub tucked in with American greenbacks he uses to pay for a sweating bottle of Coca-Cola confirms his suspicions. Chicago it is, then, and he represses the urge to sigh. It means almost another full day on this train.

_We should go to New York instead._

It’s not going to happen.

_I don’t see why not._

Because I’m going to Chicago, not New York, he tells himself, once again feeling completely foolish. That _must_ be the extraction point. He wouldn’t have a ticket from Dallas to Chicago if they meant for him to be elsewhere, would he?

____________________________________________________________________________

When he wakes up again, he finds that he’s on a bus, and they’re passing through miles of rolling hills crested with skeletal winter-blackened trees, and the weak morning sunshine is glittering through graffiti drawn on the dirty window by people who have known love and boredom. It’s wholly disconcerting, not least of all because he’s reasonably sure that he had been in Chicago recently and this can’t be it; one thing he _can_ remember is that he’d taken a train there.

“Where are we?” It comes out before he can stop himself, and he’s alarmed that his words emerge in a precarious whisper. It makes him sound weak and scared, and he is neither of those things, he reminds himself.

Fortunately, the pretty teenage girl sitting next to him mistakes his poorly masked disquiet for the crankiness of an exhausted traveler. “Oh, hey, you’re awake! Just passed Columbus, on our way to Pittsburgh. The driver said he’s also going to make a stop in Philadelphia, and then it’s only two hours to New York from there,” she says with a smile.

“Oh,” he says, as if he hasn’t just found himself inadvertently in the middle of fucking Ohio.

“I’m real excited. I know I said that before, but it’s like the closer we get, the more excited I am. Have you ever been there before?”

“To New York?”

“Of _course_ to New York. My sister goes to Fordham. Remember?”

“Yeah. I’ve been,” he says, though he doesn’t remember having spoken to her before at _all,_ and suddenly there’s an unfamiliar spike in his gut that makes him want to double over to get rid of it, as if curling up will magically solve the problem, but he manages to stay seated normally, though he’s bitten his tongue hard enough to make it bleed. But he can’t spit it out, not here, so he swallows every few seconds just to keep it from accumulating in his mouth. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever had to do, not by a long shot, but he can’t help but feel it would be far less painful if not for the accompanying sensation that it’s becoming very hard to breathe properly, even though many of the windows are cracked open, and there’s even a slight early-spring chill that’s crept inside the bus.

_You’re afraid._

I’m not.

_You are._

Fuck off.

_If you’re not afraid, why is your heart playing “Camptown Races” double-time inside your chest?_

Why are you doing this to me?

_Don’t try and pin that on me, soldier. You’re doing just fine panicking all by yourself._

He rests his forehead against the cool windowpane, thankful that he’d at least had the presence of mind to _not_ take the aisle seat, and focuses on getting his breathing back under control. Eventually the nausea subsides, but when he finally uncurls his hands, he sees that he’s dug half-moon trenches into the palm of his real one. The skin isn’t broken, at least. He wilts into the battered cushions, burying himself as deep as he can into his leather jacket, and the girl doesn’t talk to him again; in Pittsburgh, she switches seats with an old woman who knits and hums softly the rest of the way, and doesn’t look at him once.

He’s not sure what gives him away, what concerns her enough that she moves as far from him as possible for the remaining six hours, but he finds that honestly, he’s fine with that.

It’s fortunate that he can see the billboards of Times Square in the near distance once he exits Port Authority—he would know it anywhere, because Americans aren’t satisfied keeping their movies and television programs to themselves, and they seem fond of using the same footage for everything—because it’s an easy way to orient himself in the city. New York is colder than he’d thought it would be, and the setting sun bathes the tops of the buildings around him in frozen fire.

It makes him think of bloodstains on snow, ragged scrims of ice forming around the edges of crimson puddles, and the sound of many people screaming, and the stench of cordite and charred bodies.

_I’ve got this._

No, he tries to say, no you don’t, get out, go away.

_Give it a rest already. Haven’t you fucked this up enough?_

I haven’t _done_ anything.

_Maybe it’s time you should. Now get out of my way._

But he doesn’t have the chance to reply before the skyscrapers stop gleaming so brightly as they did before and total darkness engulfs him. He’s actually not sure that he minds, in the few seconds that he has to think about it before his eyes snap open again.

Bucky stares at the city in front of him as if he’s seeing it for the very first time.

___________________________________________________________________________

_I don’t know who’s been driving, but I sure don’t like what he’s done to my gears. He got ‘em all gummed up. But I’m not that worried, not really. He was easy to break. He hardly even put up a fight, when it came down to it. He just let me take over like we were at a dance at the officers’ club and I wanted to cut in on his girl, and he was glad for a chance to catch his breath after a real hot jitterbug._

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

See, what _really_ worries me is that I’m pretty sure he’s done something awful. I mean, how the hell else do you wind up with a metal arm that isn’t just for show, but actually _works_?

Maybe he’s done a _lot_ of somethings.

Because not only has my left arm been replaced with something out of a Verne novel, I’ve now found myself in New York, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the same city I visited last time they gave us R&R. The war is clearly over, probably has been for some time, because I don’t see anyone in uniform. And I guess we won, given that nobody here appears to be speaking German or Japanese. They’re all dressed like perfect idiots, though, but hey, that’s New York for you.  Of course, whatever clown’s been using my body doesn’t seem to have much in the wallet aside from a train ticket stub, a couple dollars, and a fake driver’s license. It’s got my home state right, but nothing else. The date of birth is all off—says I was born in 1951. And the name sure isn’t one I’ve ever used.

So I get my priorities straight. You’ve gotta have priorities. First, I head for the first subway station I can find—conveniently located in Times Square, although it’s a _lot_ dirtier than I remember, and the fare’s 35 cents, when it used to be a nickel. But then, all the advertisements I’ve seen just walking the few blocks to get here seem to involve a completely absurd amount of money. At least they’re still using tokens, I guess, even if they’ve got a big Y stamped inside the center, not solid all the way through.

Next, I get on the N train, it’s called now, though it used to be the BMT Service 4. Lucky for me, it’s rush hour, and nobody much notices me. But then, I also don’t stay on the subway too long, getting off at Prince Street with a newly-replenished wallet and a few things I might be able to fence if it came down to it. I feel guilty about it for a little while—but _only_ a little while. I have a lot more to be guilty about than relieving some people of a couple fives and tens, don’t I? Even without whatever I did to wind up with this weird prosthetic arm—which _aches_ , by the way, all along my left shoulder, and trying to loosen it up with stretches just makes it a million times worse instead of better—I’ve still got plenty more in my past I could dig up if I really wanted to play that particular blame game.

Third, I stop and buy a paper from a news stand, since there aren’t any kids standing on the corners with bundles of them anymore, and sit down on a half-busted bench in a scrubby little park. It’s deserted this time of the evening, and the streetlamps offer plenty of light to read by. Weirdly, I’m almost comforted by the fact that newspapers exist in this New York, even though the masthead is anything but comforting, because it says it’s February 18, 1973, and I need to know how in the holy everliving _hell_ I got here, given that the last thing I really remember is jumping on that crazy ro—

Wait a minute, am I _dead_?

Is this some insane hallucination I’m having as my brain finally shorts out for good?

No, you moron, of course you’re not dead, I tell myself. There’s no way even _I_ could come up with this level of detail. Besides, my imagination’s a lot more wired toward pretty girls and free hooch than toward paying too much to ride the subway, for chrissakes. I don’t understand half the things they’re talking about in this paper anyway, and while I’m not exactly Einstein, I’m no dummy, either.

Clearly, there’s something else going on.

For one thing, the lead story is an ongoing feature on a secret super-soldier program down at Camp Cathcart, starting in 1942, that apparently nobody outside the government ever knew about until someone leaked it to the press.

Time to rearrange my priorities from here, I decide. First, I’ve got to find somewhere to sleep—I could sleep on the street, and I would, but it’s freezing outside and I just don’t want to take that chance. Second, I need to get some food into me, because I think my stomach might cave in on itself. It’s like I haven’t eaten in days. Third, I need to make sure the library at Bryant Park is still standing, because I think I have a _lot_ of reading to do.

I wonder if Steve knew.

It’s not hard to find a corner shop with sandwiches, and I buy three of them along with a Coke. It costs me almost five bucks, and they’re not exactly the Carnegie Deli, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. Somehow I don’t get sick even though I practically destroy each one in about four bites. The Coke still tastes the same as it did before, and it still comes in glass bottles, but they’re bigger than they used to be. Now _that_ , I don’t mind too much. It’s also not hard to find a seedy hostel, thank god, that doesn’t ask any questions aside from whether I’ve got the two bucks for a bed or not. They don’t even begrudge me the use of a telephone book, which I use to look up the public library, and I almost sigh with relief when I find the listing.

I don’t _actually_ sigh, though, because that would be weird.

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library’s answering system –something automated, because no way do they keep a staff around this late to answer the phones—tells me cheerfully that it’s closed for the evening but will reopen at ten A.M., which is all I need to hear. I sleep pretty well after that, all things considered.

The next morning, I shell out another 35 cents for a subway token and ride back uptown. I don’t pick any pockets this time, though I might have to in another couple of days. The library reminds me of Dorothy’s little Kansas house if you plunked it down in a redwood forest; it’s completely dwarfed by the huge office buildings surrounding it, but the outside hasn’t changed. Gotten a little dirtier, maybe. I reach up and touch the paw of a lion on my way inside for good luck, and I can’t remember which one is Patience and which one is Fortitude, but I don’t guess it matters, because I’ll need both.

The librarian looks up as I approach the reference desk and smiles. “Can I help you, dear?”

“Um, yeah. I’m looking for stuff about Captain America,” I say.

“Did you have anything in particular that you were looking for?”

“Uh. All of it? I’m doing my thesis on him,” I tell her.

She laughs, as if she hears it all the time.  Then again, she probably does. “There’s an awful lot of material on Captain America out there, son. Do you want to start out with the books first? They’re good reference points if you wind up needing to see specific articles from the microfiche reserves.”

I give her a grateful smile like I’m the college student I must resemble to her. “That would be great. Thank you.”

Turns out that a _lot_ of shit has happened since  1945, and I don’t just mean that we won the war.

There’s the Camp Cathcart experiments, which I read about in the paper copies of the _Times_ that the library keeps for a year or so before putting them on microfiche, but I read about them later—and have to stop doing so several times in the process, because I start feeling sick and lightheaded reading about how my country treated those men. Steve _definitely_ didn’t know, I realize immediately, as soon as I truly understand the sheer magnitude of what was done to them. He would never have allowed it to continue, if he had known. There’s absolutely no way.  It’s monstrous and barbaric and even though it revolts me, I’m honestly not all that surprised. The government’s always been good at exploiting people. I mean, hey, look at Steve and me. We weren’t the first, and I know for sure now that we weren’t the last.

But first, there’s the books detailing what I already know about Steve, because I was there for most of it. Those aren’t so bad, even if I’m not always thrilled with the golly-gee tone, especially in the earlier biographies. But I am not at _all_ prepared to see a photo of Captain America and Bucky from September 1945.

Not only is the last thing I remember from _April_ 1945, but that picture isn’t of Steve and me. It’s of two completely different people. The kid in my outfit looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him no matter how hard I try—and I do, so hard I just about give myself a headache.

What in the _hell._

Even worse, there’s a picture from 1953, and I don’t even sort of recognize _those_ guys wearing our uniforms.

I force myself to read the rest of what the reference desk librarian has compiled for me, how even though the Invaders didn’t live on, Captain America and Bucky apparently did. I learn that Namor hasn’t been seen since apparently he tried to take over the surface world with a giant squid-whale hybrid thing (typical), Jim hasn’t been heard from in a while, and Brian and Tom and Madeline are all dead. Jacqueline married a lord and retired from the business, which doesn’t sound so bad on paper, but then I think about how bored she must be not doing anything, and I flip the page before I can think about it too much longer and start feeling sorry for her. She wouldn’t appreciate that one bit.

It all makes my flesh crawl. Not necessarily the parts where people have moved on or died or disappeared—being a superhero isn’t exactly a ticket to having a long, comfortable life—but the thought of someone else putting on that uniform, _my_ uniform, is like seeing someone else walking around in my skin. A wave of nausea hits me hard and hits me fast, but somehow I make it to the men’s room before I throw up. I’m not sure how, but I do. Which is good, because I can’t afford to get kicked out of the library right now.

It’s not until later that I wonder if they felt the same way about putting on the blue and red as I feel about them doing it.

I put all of the materials at the library on reserve and come back every day to finish the stack, even though part of me doesn’t _want_ to know about any of it. I wish I could unlearn all of what I’ve read, but I can’t, and the only thing left is to keep going. Especially if I want to know what the hell I’m getting myself into before I start trying to find anyone else. I don’t find any mentions of Nick Fury, which means he’s probably alive. Fury’s the kind who would only make headlines when he died. Good news for me. Probably. If I can figure out a way to get to him.

 I almost get sidetracked by the other pieces of history that I’ve somehow missed:  FDR’s death, the A-bomb, television, Korea, the space race, Kennedy’s assassination, civil rights, Vietnam, the women’s movement. They all manage to pop up in whatever else I’m reading, somehow, and I’m tempted to pause every time so I can rummage around in the encyclopedia for context.  But I don’t. I stay focused. I wish I had more time to linger over this part of things, because I can’t fucking _believe_ that so much has happened over the last 30 years, and none of it is my own history, or the history of the people I loved, so it’s easy to be fascinated by it.

But I don’t really think I have much time, not at all.

There’s a red star on my metal arm, and if someone took the time to paint it on, you can be damn sure it wasn’t just for decoration—it’s a mark of ownership.

I switch flophouses every other night after the first one, picking them at random all over the lower part of Manhattan, even in Chinatown and as far down as the Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s not enough.

They find me anyway, in less than two weeks’ time. And they drag me from the hostel wearing NYPD uniforms but speaking Russian to each other. It’s like I’m just some flailing, swearing meatsack for all the attention I’m being paid—aside from getting manhandled out of a run-down old building that probably used to be someone’s nice home fifty years ago and into the back of a windowless van, that is.

Makes sense.

Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, though. And I won’t go down without a fight.

Not that they give me the chance to be, or that I ever really get a chance to fight them, because the second they’ve got me pinned down inside the van for just a few seconds, I feel something sharp pierce the skin of my right arm, and then right after that, I don’t feel anything anymore.

___________________________________________________________________________

The last time he wakes up, he’s standing at parade rest with his head bowed as the General fires question after question at him. None of them seem to have landed so far, and consequently they get louder, like someone turning the dial up on a radio. It’s as if General Karpov believes that their increased volume will magically conjure up a confession. Perhaps this usually works on him. He’s not really sure.

“Well?” the General barks.

He almost flinches, but catches himself at the very last moment, and turns it into a shake of the head.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

“No, sir.” His voice is rough and weak, as if he’s recently made a lot of noise.

The General steps directly in front of him, and he forces himself to look up and meet his eyes, even though it soon becomes terribly uncomfortable.  “Is there anything you _do_ remember?”

And this time he _does_ flinch, because the General’s voice has softened just a bit, and somehow that’s worse than the shouting had been—more ominous, in a way he can’t articulate. He needs to give the General an answer and he needs to give one _now_.

Help, he thinks to himself, almost reflexively.

There’s no answer.  So he doesn’t know why he tries it again, exactly.

Help. And, almost as an afterthought: please?

Then, he wonders why he’s even doing this. What the hell is wrong with him, anyway? There’s no sense in it – who would answer? Nobody can hear him like this. He shakes his head again, mostly to clear it, but the action will look deliberate and emphatic.

“No, sir. I’m sorry. I wish I did,” he has to say, nearly choking on the words. There’s this strange lump in his throat that’s making it hard to breathe properly, let alone speak, and he wonders where it’s come from.

The General reaches out, and for one horrible moment, he’s convinced that the General is about to wrap it around his worthless neck and squeeze him to death, like a jungle python with something small and verminous, but it’s just to pat his shoulder. “I believe you.”

His vision blurs through brimming, stinging saltwater, and he drops his head once more to hide it, knowing that he has failed, and he will fully deserve whatever punishment they choose for him.

It’s a true disappointment when all they do is put him back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> The song title is taken from Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song," which was #5 on the U.S. Billboard charts the week of February 17, 1973. It hit #1 the following week.


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